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After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

Episode XVIII takes a detour from Mahbubani's "Has China Won?" and looks closely at the military side of the burgeoning strategic conflict between the American hegemon and its rival to the East.

Focusing on three texts by a group of naval experts, we discuss how Alfred T. Mahan has been central to China's grand strategy for the Pacific and how its military planners' view of the First Island chain, a simple but unfortunate geospatial reality, forms a critical aspect of their conception of China's place in the world. Finally, to Mahbubani's question, "Can the US make U-Turns?" we test the question against military expenditures on outdated platforms and weapons systems in the Pacific.

We head into our final discussion on "Has China Won?" by sharing some thoughts on how these military-strategic works have reframed our earlier, perhaps overly optimistic view of China's successes. On the next episode, we'll continue exploring that question through the lens of economics, centrally focused on Pettis and Klein's "Trade Wars are Class Wars."

Works under discussion:

Michael J. Green: By More Than Providence
T. Yoshihara and J. Holmes: Red Star Over the Pacific
Jerry Hendrix: At What Cost a Carrier?

 Thanks for listening. 

Jason King provides the music you hear in After the 'End of History.' 

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

Part II drills into Mahbubani's discussion of "how other countries will choose" in the coming showdown between China, a burgeoning regional hegemon, and the United States, the ostensibly failing empire. 

From there we review last year's debate between Mahbubani and John Mearsheimer which took place virtually, in the midst of the pandemic's first wave, at the Center for Independent Study. We're particularly interested in how each thinker frames his views on military conflict, counterbalancing and alliance building. We also share some thoughts on who won the debate, noting the stark differences in outlook -- somewhat panglossian in Kishore's case; hardcore realist in John's -- and revisit the ideas of our old friend Christopher Layne, whose recent work in Foreign Affairs sheds classical neorealist light on the debate. 

Join us next week for a discussion on Pettis and Klein's "Trade Wars are Class Wars." 

Jason King provides the music you hear in After the 'End of History.' 

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

Episode 16: Sacred Cows, Institutional Orthodoxies

Kishore Mahbubani, author of last year's "Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy," is an academic and diplomat, serving as Singapore's delegate to the UN for over ten years. On this week's episode of After the 'End of History' we introduce his work on the stakes of China's rise, which presents an "inevitable but avoidable" clash vis a vis American hegemony. It should be clear by the end of this week's discussion -- the first part of three -- that he answers his title's question with a resounding yes, challenging the institutional orthodoxies of American foreign policy thought.

Mahbubani believes that America lacks the strategic vision necessary to engage an undeniably rising China in a rational and geopolitically productive manner. But, perhaps more damning, it also behaves inflexibly, failing to temper its ingrained "exceptionalist" thinking to concede a second-place or even equal position of economic, military and political power in the world. This failure to make "U-Turns," among other problems in American foreign policy with respect to China, provides the basis of our discussion this week.

Our material for this series of conversations also includes a debate between Mahbubani and John Mearsheimer. The third part will consider the recent economic work of Pettis & Klein, whose acclaimed "Trade Wars are Class Wars"  helps makes sense of the rise of inequality in the age of globalization, a question that places China's steady integration into the international market front and center. 

Thanks to Jason King, who provides the music that you hear on After the 'End of History.'  

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

At last we wrap our discussion on Perry Anderson's excellent American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers with a summary conversation. For those that may be joining the podcast for the first time, this would be a great entry point for understanding Anderson's recent Marxist scholarship, where he has focused on the social, economic and political development of the great and emerging powers of the world. His other books include The New Old World, Brazil Apart and recent studies on Britain (see NLR 125) and the EU (see LRB 17 December 2020 and 7 January 2021).

Breaking into a more informal discussion of what we think this work offers activists and writers opposed to US imperialism, we drill into some theoretical issues around the state and society, the role of intellectuals and strategy (uniquely?) in American foreign policy, while also projecting out beyond the book's scope, which was published midway through Obama's second term, into the Trump administration and after.

As a segue into the next book under discussion -- Kishore Mahbubani's Has China Won? -- we also tackle some issues around the rise of China as a geopolitical rival to America's global hegemony and what that might mean for the direction of American foreign policy in the near to mid-term. Join us for a more in depth discussion on this topic in Episode 16. 

Jason King continues to kindly provide the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' Thanks for listening.  

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

We conclude our chapter-by-chapter  summary and analysis with a deeper look at the so-called "realists" and "economic determinists" covered in "Realist Ideals" and "Economy First." Rounding out the discussion, Gopal's focus on "Annexe" draws out some insights about the extent to which Leo Strauss's political and philosophical work underlie the neoconservative movement that unleashed a torrent of violent regime change actions and permanent wars throughout the Middle East over the last two decades.

Chapter markers below:

Realist Ideals: 00:00:32 (Mario)
Economy First: 00:45:35 (Tom)
Annexe: 00:53:12 (Gopal) 

Next week, join us for our final discussion on American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, a more free-form discussion on the educational value this book offers to activists and writers opposed to American imperialism, as well as the  theoretical problems and themes that we identified throughout the text. 

As always, Jason King kindly provides the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' You can find more of his work on Soundcloud. 

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

The second half of Anderson's American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers -- Consilium -- reconstructs the perspectives of key contributors to academic (IR) thought and State Department practice, including Mead, Mandelbaum, Ikenberry and Kupchan, whose various shades of Wilsonianism and liberal internationalism (or humanitarian interventionism) are detailed here in our discussion of "Crusaders."

Episode 13 is the first part of two on Anderson's summation of America's central foreign policy thinkers. Next week we return to discuss Robert Kagan, Brzezinski and Robert Art, who Anderson describes as "realists" in a meaningful sense, but all of whose vision and historical grounding  of American Grand Strategy, while distinct in meaningful ways from the Wilsonians above, fall back upon the liberal default expected of the Prince's counselors.

Jason King kindly provides the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' You can find more of his work on Soundcloud. 

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

In the fifth installment of our focus on Perry Anderson's American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, we reconstruct the last three chapters of "Imperium." The presentations cover the period from the Nixon administration through the first half of Obama's second term.

Recalibrations: Gopal -- 00:00:00 to 00:27:52
Liberalism Militant: Tom -- 00:28:32 to 00:55:02
The Incumbent: Mario -- 00:55:33 to 01:43:45

Jason King kindly provides the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' You can find more of his work on Soundcloud. 

Support the show

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After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

In our 11th episode, we focus on Chapter 5  of American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, in which Anderson details the objectives of American intervention into Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia during the Cold War. This will be familiar territory for those who followed our discussions on The Jakarta Method.

Jason King kindly provides the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' You can find more of his work on Soundcloud. 

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

Superpower Showdown.

After spending some time on the character of George Kennan, author of the Long Telegram, special guest Gopal provides an in depth look at the theoretical considerations of "Keystones," including the relationship between capitalism and the inter-state system. We discuss what bearing the assertion that capitalism is a "system of production without borders" has on Anderson's analysis of the Cold War. "Keystones" demonstrates Anderson's application of historical materialism to America’s emergence as a hemispheric hegemon in all of its theoretical sophistication.

Jason King kindly provides the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' You can find more of his work on Soundcloud. 




 

Support the show

Send us a text

After the ‘End of History’ is a podcast about International Relations and History. It is part of the Hawks & Sparrows project. 

Want more? Please consider supporting the podcast on Patreon to receive bonus episodes, as well as early releases of the monthly Hawks & Sparrows newsletter. 

You can also follow us on Twitter @after_history. 

Thanks for listening,
Mario and Tom 

*

In part II of our discussion on Perry Anderson's American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers, we take a deeper look at the first three chapters of "Imperium," reading the dynamics between exceptionalism (isolation from the "fallen world") and universalism (making the world in America's image) that can be found in the period from America's founding to the Second World War. We also tackle the emergence of National Security in the foreign policy establishment vis a vis Truman, Kennan and the 'containment' of the Soviet Union.

Chapter discussion markers:

I. "Prodromes": 00:00:45
II "Crystallization": 00:21:33
III. "Security": 00:46:08

Jason King kindly provides the music that you hear in After the 'End of History.' You can find more of his work on Soundcloud. 

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